3 comments:

Sorry, Clayton, but I'm not going to worry about this, other than sympathy for the tragic deaths of a few hundred in Africa.

Ebola is not a scary disease unless you catch it. It is transmitted (outside the bush) only by people already pretty sick, and then only by bodily fluids. It's not a terrorist threat and it's not going to be contagious in the west. It's far less of a threat than Anthrax, and Anthrax isn't much of an issue unless weaponized and dispersed in an unnatural way (aerosol).

Also, a disease with a very high mortality after a relatively short infection is self limiting. The really nasty epidemics are form diseases that have participated in host/parasite evolution for a while, and thus don't kill of their hosts too quickly. Malaria comes to mind.